Map Legend

Polylines (Highways):

Explanation: There are 6 layouts in total. Colorwise however "thin", "wide" "clas" are all the same. Easy and Hiking are only slightly different. They only differ in the width of the lines to best match the different GPS. The mapsource/Qlandkarte GT layout (referred to as "trad" from now on) however has different colors, with less contrast. Therefore in this mag legend for Polylines (Highways) there are always two examples. One using the "trad" layout (on the top), and one using the "clas" layout below).

Please note, as this question often pops up, many variables like tracktype are just munged together from other keys like smoothness or surface. If you want to know what is the primary factor please read the sourcecode of the style-file (see FAQ).

Thin, Classic or Wide?

This choice exists only for the standard layout. It depends on your device DPI which to choose. Thin has the thinnest lines - it is suited for older low DPI Garmin GPS devices. (60CSx, Dakota). Classic is in the middle (similar width to easy, trad (desktop) and hiking layout) - it is suited for devices like Vista HCx, Etrex 20/30, edge 705. Wide layout has the widest lines - it is for high DPI devices like Oregon, etrex 30x, Colorado, or edge 1000. Most Garmin devices presented 2015 or later fall in that category. Because traditionally the high DPI devices had lower contrast - the Wide layout has highest contrast. It looks pretty bad on desktop use though.

Quick guide to the colors used for ways and tracks:

Red=tracks which are wide enough for a car to pass. Unpaved - the smaller/more dottet the segments of the line are - the worse/less even the surface.

Black/Grey/: Cycleway or paved track.

Green: Singletrail / small trail with mtb classification (mtb:scale) - from 0 easy to 5 (good trial skill needed) - again the smaller the segments - the more difficult

Brown: Path - usually rated according to the Swiss Alpine Club hiking trail classification. Again - the smaller the segments - the more difficult.

In general for brown/red/ ways: If a way is not rated for difficulty - it will be shown as continuous line.

Ways with mtb attributes or sac_scale (clickable thumbnails for full size)

34 comments to Map Legend

Is there a way to know which trails are hiking only, vs a trail where bikes are allowed? What about mountain biking only trails, as rare as that is? These are both rather important issues for the future of mtb access and the way in which the public interfaces with mountain bikers. Thanks

Hi Erik – In general if something is explicitly forbidden – then XXX black crosses will be used – else you have to know the default of the country you are in. E.g. Switzerland allowed, Austria forbidden, Germany (complicated – depends on the Bundesland), Italy allowed and so on. And yes – in countries like Austria we are always riding illegal. In some places it’s tolerated, in others we risk fines of over 1000€ – but that applies to everything that is not officially a street open for all vehicles – or a cycleway. Even tracks/dirt roads are forbidden for mtbiking in Austria.

I suppose I’ll mark Austria off my list of places to ride. My concern at this juncture is in vacation planning and in general doing my best to ride only open trails as to not risk foreign fines, violence, and jail. Before flying and driving hours to discover a sign that says “no bikes,” taking risks on an unsigned route, or trying to locate a website in a foreign langue to determine if something open, it would be nice to know by looking at a track’s color or some indicator that bikes are allowed. I realize the status of trails change from closed to open, or the reverse, so accuracy not be perfect, but something is better than nothing. At this time I rely on MTB Projects and Trail Forks, which aren’t perfect as sometimes hiking only and illegal trails slip past moderators, and they don’t show “all” the trails nor all intersections. The safe bet is to stick to the more popular and well known routes to know what is open, but I was hoping Openmtb would have some insights on trail legality for places and connectors not shown by these other apps etc. At any rate, thanks, the Iceland map is great.

Well for Austria you are therefore only allowed on those trails – where you see the black route indicator – and it would make no sense at all to clutter up the map by showing that all those nice trails are not allowed to be ridden. An yes – much better go to Italy, Switzerland or France for mtbiking in the Alps. Not only is it allowed – you will also be wellcome outside of bikeparks/trailpark ghettos that we have in Austria. This does not mean you cannot ride mtb in Austria – the chance to get fined is very low – maybe 500 small fines (you pay 100€ and promise not to ever ride there anymore) – and 10-20 big fines (over 1000€) per year – with loads of mtbikers. I live in Austria and ride here all the time – for holidays I never stay here however but go mainly to Switzerland (best parks, best maintained, and often lifts included in the “Kurtaxe” – plus everyone wellcomes you). And I never stick to mtb routes -as they are plain boring for 90% are forest roads not trails (and if trail super easy)

Hello! I’ve noticed a problem in rendering of your map in Garmin, while having some bad experience in recent Belarus cycling trip.

Many unpaved roads in OSM have only 2 properties: highway=track & surface=unpaved. With the Openmtbmap, the Garmin device renders such road as “G2 Trk”. This is incorrect, as G2 implies “quite good road”, while in reality this road may be truly horrible (drawn across the swamp using the satellite imagery, and actually passable only on tractor or tank).

I’d suggest putting the G* tags on road only if there are appropriate “tracktype” or “smoothness” tags, not basing only on surface=unpaved (which may mean every kind of surface in reality).

okay- well in Western Europe that usually works quite well – and I’m not sure what other default I should chose – none also does not seem fitting. maybe display it like G3 or G4? For other surface tags this works more reliable – but es unpaved is very broad.

You know, in absolute best possible case that may be G1/G2, but that’s quite rare outside the highly developed countries. In most cases that would be G2/G3. But quite often – down to G3/G4 (difficult to ride on MTB, impossible on other bikes). And in all cases that technically will be “compacted” surface.

If you don’t look at tracktype and smoothness tags while assigning the G tag, that would be better to set G2/G3 on compacted roads and none on unpaved roads.

No – the rule is to only use surface if neither tracktype, smoothness nor sac_scale nor mtb:scale is available – else it’s dropped. In central Europa compacted is usually pretty good, but it’s not very common – or mostly also tracktype mapped. I will decrease it to G3 for openmtbmap and G4 for velomap.

OK. Also the same solution (downgrading from G2/G3 to G3/G4) may be applied to gravel surface. In many cases it’s really rough and barely rideable on road bike. But unlike the compacted surface, large ponds or sand-covered areas rarely appear there.

But I don’t understand, why using the different G tags for the same road in Velomap and MTB Map? I thought that the track grade is absolute value, not relative. I mean that MTB can easily ride on G1-G3, and with difficulties on G4. The road bike can easily ride on G1-G2 and with difficulties on G3.

why different – because in VeloMap it’s worse if you encounter worse condition than you expect due to the type of bike. Usually gravel is the typical G2 track though. But yes to keep it safe I will put it as G3 for Velomap. And yes tracktype or smoothness is absolute – but how I interpret surface to tracktype is not.

I use the OpenMTBmap for family bicycle touring. Mostly unpaved roads (thus asphalt-oriented navigation of Velomap is not suitable), 15 kgs on the front rack and handlebar, 17+ kgs my son, 5 kgs the bicycle seat. So I also don’t like finding the road worse than it was tagged on map. 🙂

On windows it’s at the top of the download list – on OSx they are hard to find – correct. CTRL-F “legend” – it’s listed under the europe countries maps with name legend. and well – scale doesn’t matter…

Hi Felix, have a happy new year in first. I’m writing about a track type you assigned to a trail that I followed with my MTB last 31/12/2016. The track is classified as XBK (no bicycle or prohibited bicycle) but I saw this is instead an allowed track for the MTB because this is one of the training routes of the local MTB School as you can see on the enclosed pictures. Just to localize the tile or zone I show also the coordinates of a summit I reached. Regards Giulio (gbal)

I’ve noticed that when the value in incline tag is numeric, mtb:scale:uphill is not rendered–i.e. if incline=15% or incline=-10%, there is no indication as to the incline on the map, even if mtb:scale:uphill is set. It works when inline=up or incline=down, though.

Regarding mapping paths in OSM, when a path is not allowed to bicycles but only to pedestrians, can I use “access=no, foot=yes”, or is it better to specify “access=no, bicycles=no, foot=yes”? “bicycles=no” would be redundant, as I would already have “access=no”, but what do you think?

Well – you should only map bicycle=no if it is explicitly forbidden (by a streetsign). access=no & foot=yes would mean the same essentially – but I won’t map the crosses to tell it’s forbidden – because I assume it’s illegal but mostly tolerated to still mtb. I.e. in Austria if mtbiking is not explicitely allowed – it is forbidden everywhere – so we have to break the law if we want to mtbike.

So are you telling that bicycle=no is not rendered? I put it on a path that has an explicit sign, but I don’t see anything different from all other paths on the map, as if this tag is not actually considered.